


Left in the Dark

by hiddencait



Category: Blade (Movie Series)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 13:46:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1187478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddencait/pseuds/hiddencait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She never sees him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alyse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyse/gifts).



> So apparently I have a LOT of unvoiced headcannon for Karen despite not having seen the first Blade movie in quite some time. This is absolutely dedicated to my Alyse who continues to treat me with Abbie/King deliciousness. Sorry this didn't turn out even remotely porny my dear - Blade did not cooperate in the slightest. What else is new?
> 
> Anyway, the prompts that inspired me were "strength" and "faith." Though, I also know that both went in a fairly angsty direction. Oops?

She doesn’t seem him all that often. Hell, be honest with yourself, girl, she tells herself wryly. She never sees him.

 

Whistler was their go-between, arriving off and on for whatever research she had on hand, passing it on to other cells, or giving her notes from some of the other researchers. She and Sommerfield have a delightful long-distance friendship, not that either dare to meet.

 

It’s a risk having any contact at all. One day, Karen knows that either Whistler won’t come, or that someone else will have followed behind, intent on wiping out the scientists on the periphery of this war. The science is the real threat to the vampires, after all. Or so Karen has convinced herself. The cure alone was one hell of a blow. It’s brought back some powerful players for their side, Whistler himself, and even that mouthy kid Sommerfield keeps telling her about. King, she thinks Sommerfield said his name was.

 

And now, God, now she and Sommerfield are working on what might be the end game, a virus tied to the source blood. If they can manage it. If they have time.

 

It’s a lot of “ifs,” and Karen knows their chances are slim.

 

Slimmer than even she might have guessed, or so she realizes late one night while watching the news. The FBI has captured the fugitive Blade, and his accomplice is dead, or so the bleach blonde reporter says, smiling widely as if it’s the best news she’s reported in days.

 

Karen just lights a candle for Whistler, as the dead associate could only have been Whistler, and waits to see if anyone will contact her. She wonders if anyone even knows how to contact her. Sommerfield might, but if Blade’s now front and center with the Nightstalkers the way Whistler always wanted him to be… Well, Karen thinks Sommerfield might have her hands full.

 

It ends up being days before she hears from anyone, days during which Blade’s escape from police custody is reported, and then an article shows up on a conspiracy theorist website about the FBI storming a high-rise where Blade was suspected to be holing up, but failing to find anything but strange piles of ash and dust.

 

Karen knows something major must have gone down, but she’d never have guessed what before some guy she’s never seen before shows up on her doorstep. Caulder isn’t someone Whistler or Sommerfield ever mentioned, and it takes the full script of hunter cell call and responses before she even opens the door to him. After he tells her his news, Karen almost wishes she’d left him to rot outside.

 

It isn’t far to the man, she knows; he hasn’t caused any of this. But it doesn’t make it hurt any less to hear that she’s lost both of her only friends within the course of a week. And who knows if Blade’s survived or not – Caulder doesn’t know. Apparently Whistler’s daughter is even less chatty than he was, and neither she nor King have given the tall researcher a straight answer about what happened to the Daywalker during the assault on the Talos lair.

 

Karen barely listens to Caulder’s remarkably soft spoken diatribe about the lack of trust between he and the remaining Nightstalkers. Not that Karen doesn’t agree that the other man has done a lot for the trio of Whistler, King, and the Sommerfield’s surviving daughter, but trust is even harder to earn from a vampire hunter than from any one else. Frankly, Karen’s surprised Caulder already seems to trust her. Sommerfield must have won him over for her. The thought chokes her up, but Caulder doesn’t seem to notice.

 

They set up the same minimal contact arrangement that Karen had with Whistler. She almost argues her way into meeting the others, nearly giving in to her wish to break her isolation and to meet Sommerfield’s Zoe like they’d always talked about. Karen doesn’t though. She knows the cells are safer this way, with the anonymity protecting the others if one team is ever discovered and turned. Safer, but lonely.

 

The war continues as it always has for her. Caulder comes and goes, and in time becomes a gruff sort of friend. She’d never be able to invite the other man over for dinner or coffee, but she enjoys their chats about the Nightstalkers’ current hunts and the antics of King’s painfully clumsy courtship of Abigail Whistler. Karen’s amused to see that Caulder absolutely ships the pair of hunters. She in turn hopes for success in King’s advances in a sad sort of solidarity for the former vampire. She works with Caulder to refine the formula to Daystar, as best they can. It’s slow going for now, and Karen knows that they will never be able to maximize the virus’s potency without another sample of the Dagon’s blood (she refuses to call him Dracula as it some how lessens the thought of the creature who had once been a god – names, after all have power).

 

She rarely allows herself to admit that she’d hate for the virus to be wiped out completely. Not only for Blade’s sake (and he is alive after all, or so the rumors say), but because Karen can no longer imagine a life after the war. Her world now revolves around vampires, and without them, she fears she would be lost, adrift and wholly without purpose.

 

Sometimes, she thinks she must feel like the familiars do, only she’s operating on the fringes of vampirehunter society, and sworn to the one vampire who’d never agree to a familiar in the first place.

 

Karen knows in her darkest thoughts that she is still waiting for Blade to return to her.

 

The knowledge is every bit as damning as a bite.


End file.
